ST.JOHNS COUNTY, FL - Early voting is set to begin in St. Johns County and the GOP in Florida is sounding the alarm on accusations of fraud. The St. Johns County Republican Party (SJCRP) claims that fraudulent endorsement cards are being circulated ahead of the August primary.
St. Johns County Sheriff Robert Hardwick confirmed the concerns with LET and advised that they are under investigation.
According to the Gateway Pundit, these cards appear to be near-exact replicas of the legitimate GOP endorsements and have reportedly been mailed in an attempt to confuse voters and sway the election. Denver Cook, chairman of the St. Johns County GOP said in a statement, "When you talk about election interference and election fraud, I don't know how it could be worse than this."
The fake endorsement cards list eight candidates that directly contradict those endorsed by the St. Johns County GOP. Cook said that this incident is a "deliberate and malicious" attempt to mislead voters and disrupt the integrity of the election. He said, "This is our real voter guide, you can see on the back side of it, we explain why we did, we have the required disclaimers at the bottom."
Cook said that he has received over a dozen phone calls from concerned citizens, all saying that they were confused by the fake mailers. He added, "To do this, it's angering frustrating and it concerns me about behavior when you talk voter intimidations, voter fraud, the level of anger that's been produced."
Associate Professor of political science for the University of North Florida, Sean Freeder, said that something like this is not cheap to pull off and the goal is to cause confusion. He said, "In these close races, if you can confuse five percent of voters, that's potentially a huge victory and with an increasingly easy way to manufacture, mass produce these kind of mailers in different races, you will probably see more and more of this."
Cook said he believes it's damaging to election integrity, adding, "To come out the day before voters come out for early voting, with this level of fraud, claiming they are in fact the county party, is just beyond the bounds of reason, acceptability, and potentially not only voter fraud, out of state at federal level, but it can also be mail fraud."
Cook said that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) is aware of what is going on and if they find out who is behind the scheme, they will be pressing charges. Evan Power, the chairman of the GOP of Florida said in a statement:
"The Republican Party of Florida and the St. Johns County Republican Party are the only organizations qualified to speak officially on behalf of our party in St. Johns County. We are taking this matter very seriously and are investigating. No Florida voter should be misled by anonymous, phony groups pretending to speak for the GOP."
Cook said that they would never have sent anything from Jacksonville, adding, "You can see that it was mailed from Jacksonville on August 7th with a stamp and no return address."
He said, "We wouldn't have mailed it from Jacksonville, but additionally these cards aren't prepared to be mailed. There's no way for us to put a stamp or an address on them." For Cook, this incident is "dirty politics."
He said, "I would call this beyond dirty politics. Dirty politics you would see the hate mail that comes out on individuals or attack pieces that are fabricated, based on a sliver of truth and blown up to be this whole thing. This is so far beyond that. This is outright fraud and criminal."
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